1 H-France Salon Vol. 7 (2015), Issue #13, #6 Calm Waters James C

1 H-France Salon Vol. 7 (2015), Issue #13, #6 Calm waters James C. Collins Georgetown University Fifty years ago, French and American early modernists began the slow process of genuine interpenetration of research agendas and paradigms. The ink on David Pinkney’s famous thesis—in which North American scholars would focus on big picture issues and leave in-depth archival research to our French colleagues, for logistical reasons—was barely dry when air travel revolutionized the relationship of North American scholars to European archives.[1] In those days, references in French historiography to works by American early modernists were few and far between; one of the few French scholars who consistently stayed up-do-date with American work was Roland Mousnier. He not only made reference to the work of historians such as J. Russell Major, but he also regularly reviewed the works of American scholars, such as Orest Ranum or Robert Forster, in major French journals. One of the French Historical Studies (henceforth FHS) forum’s authors, Mousnier’s academic “grandchild” Hugues Daussy, has consistently maintained that tradition in his own work. Among French modernistes of my generation, surely the two most important figures in Franco- American integration have been Robert Descimon and Denis Crouzet. Their contribution has come through their own work, of course, but their insistence, among their students, that young French scholars read and use Anglophone scholarship has had an inestimable influence on the field. Both Robert and Denis have regularly participated in North American conferences, and they have encouraged their students to do so, as well. These efforts notwithstanding, one cannot ignore the fundamental importance of their standing seminars, at the École des Hautes Études and the Sorbonne: American scholars (including this one) have regularly sat in on the sessions and given presentations to them. For purely logistical reasons, American scholars have been far less likely to participate regularly in a seminar out in Rennes or down in Montpellier. Two of the five authors here come from the EHESS seminar: Élie Haddad, who has taken over coordination of the Friday morning seminar; and Claire Chatelain, who comes from the Christian Jouhaud wing of the EHESS modernistes. In Paris, we might add the stable of researchers who have worked with Nicole Lemaître, represented here by Thierry Amalou. Along with Daussy, who studied at Montpellier with Arlette Jouanna, we have a second author drawn from the lively world of regional universities, Isabelle Luciani, who wrote her thesis with Régis Bertrand and—a Parisian connection well known to Americans—Daniel Roche. Luciani’s essay, like her other work, illustrates one of the key contributions of scholars in those regional universities: archival scholarship on outlying regions, in her case Provence. Unsurprisingly, the regions that combine rich archives—above all the capitals of the old pays d’États—and contemporary universities have received far more research attention from French scholars than places without the second half of that combination. Those cities—places like Troyes—have provided a fine area of research for Anglophone scholars, such as Penny Roberts and Helen Chenut.[2] 2 Amalou’s essay shows the Francophone-Anglophone connection at its best; he extensively cites Anglophone scholarship. Here we see the legacy of the seizièmiste historiography, which traditionally engaged with Anglophones. French scholars working on the seventeenth century, alas, have done so less often. The three essays focusing on the seventeenth century in this forum bear out this pattern, which is odd, given that Haddad and Chatelain, in their other publications, and Luciani, on her website, engage Anglophone scholarship to the full extent.[3] All five of the essays focus on archival and printed primary sources, so we cannot reasonably expect them to have extensive historiographical segments. I do want to point out to colleagues from outside the early modern field that the scholars presented here do extensively engage Anglophone scholarship in other venues.[4] Luciani has an extraordinarily rich corpus of livres de raison: eighty-seven, of which women authored thirty-eight. Her careful reading establishes the writing practices of these authors, most of whom were familiar with the tradition of keeping a family livre de raison, and so knew its traditions. Luciani rejects the idea that the livre de raison was a genre (p. 532), yet Michel Cassan, in his chapter on private writings about the death of Henry IV, argues forcefully that it was a genre, “obeying a well-regulated formal model.”[5] One would like to see a bit more depth on such an important issue. As Luciani points out, a livre de raison could be introduced as evidence in a court of law, so we would expect a basic familiarity of juridical practices among those writing such documents. She particularly emphasizes the use of mercantile practice, essential in documents that contained so many details about a family’s financial life. Jean-François de Cambis, whose father, a financial official, had also kept a livre de raison, was the only person in her sample to discuss an annual budget, and for those of us who have worked on state finance, this simple detail goes a long way toward explaining the monarchy’s inability to create its own budget, in a modern sense.[6] The de Cambis family also illustrates another common element: livres de raison ran in the family, so that several generations would maintain this framework. In this case, in the middle of the seventeenth century, Laure de Cambis, Jean-François’s niece, kept a lengthy livre de raison. That she did so should not be surprising: women from the legal and business worlds could write and often maintained financial control over most of the household’s expenses, aside from long- term investments. Here we see a place where coming over to the dark (Anglophone) side might be some help, with the works of Jim Farr (and his students) and Julie Hardwick coming immediately to mind.[7] Luciani’s research raises some fascinating examples of the nature of personal purchases, particularly by women, but she essentially elides gender as a category of analysis of this exceptional database. We get bogged down in discussions of the “self” at any given moment and in any given text. I found nothing unusual about the use of the word “my,” as in “my grandfather”: countless letters or livres de raison, whether from the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries, use this term. The “I note” construction—specific to very few of the livres de raison, to judge from the examples—offers some interesting insights into changes in locution, but can we presume that such a change indicates the rise of a “self” in some sort of modern sense? Luciani begins with Barbara Rosenwein’s fine essay on the notion of “moi” in the High Middle Ages—an essay that appeared in Revue Historique in 2005, but which was based on a paper given at the AHA Annual Meeting in 2003—yet never seems to engage the complex analysis 3 Rosenwein sets forth. Rosenwein raises a key point in her discussion of the historiography on “me” [moi] in the Middle Ages: does “me” have to be “our” me? As Rosenwein points out, the accusation of dissimulation in a seventh-century text clearly indicates the awareness of an inner self held back from others.[8] With respect to the sixteenth century, Michael Randall has recently suggested that the distinction with the type of individual relates to the sphere of political consciousness: he argues that individualism once turned outward, toward the “public space of the community,” whereas modern individualism turns inward.[9] Luciani’s work raises the fascinating question of the evolution from a culture in which the individual, as a distinct person, certainly existed—both in reality and in theory—to one built on the principle of individualism. The contrast between individuality and individualism, unlike the false dichotomy of a society (ours) with a “me” and one without such a construct (theirs), does offer extremely fruitful lines of inquiry. Like Luciani, I have always been struck by the odd patterns of reference to non-familial events in livres de raison. Why does an author mention one event and not another? Can we take such references to be evidence of a need for “ontological reaffirmation?” (I think not.) The sparse comments on national events offer yet further uncertainty. Why do some writers mention the assassination of Henry III or Henry IV, while others do not? Given the intensity of reaction to the two assassinations—attested by many other documents, both public and individual—the absence of a mention of a royal assassination seems profoundly puzzling in a livre de raison that makes mention of far less momentous national events.[10] Much as I find some of Luciani’s speculation to be troubling, I fundamentally agree with her larger interpretation of the rise of an “I” in a new sense evident in these sources. The tone does change in the livres de raison, just as the tone changes in more detailed writings by members of the elite. A self-reflexive “I” becomes more present: I do not take this visible presence to be certain proof of the new existence of such an “I”—such may be the case, but I remain agnostic. It seems rather to be clear proof that the writers felt comfortable expressing the reflections of an “I”. The cultural norm of the twentieth century, widespread in much of Europe and the U.S., that one did not trumpet one’s own success was not evidence that individuals did not revel in their success nor that they did not have a highly developed sense of self.

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